Oregon brewing industry veteran Kyle Larsen and his wife Kacie are on the verge of launching their highly anticipated pandemic delayed Kings & Daughters Brewery via the upcoming Back Forty Beverage Company. Larsen got his start at Full Sail Brewing, became the head brewer Double Mountain Brewery in the early 2010’s before moving to the UK and leading Siren Craft Brew. Since returning to Oregon in 2019, Kyle has had stints at Thunder Island Brewing and head brewer of Trap Door Brewing while he and Kacie worked towards opening their dream project Kings & Daughters Brewery, which was originally targeted for a 2020 start date.

The name Kings & Daughters is evocative of the English pubs that the family enjoyed around the UK, and it also refers to their children. King, is a family name from past generations on Kyle’s side and it’s also the middle name of their son Whitman (4). The Larsen’s also have three daughters, Gwyneth (10), Love (7), and a three week old, Odette.

“We wanted to highlight our daughters specifically in our brewery name because our brand, our approach, our recipes, and our ethos are decidedly feminine: strong, elegant, inclusive, warm, and delicate. We want our daughters to have a sense of belonging and ownership in an industry that tends to be more masculine and male-dominated. We hope to be able to use our brand to support women's rights, charities, and nonprofits,” says Kacie Larsen.

The first thing that may strike you about the Kings & Daughters is the light touch of a hand drawn logo illustration that is unlike what 99% of the beer brands look like today. Knowing that they wanted to visually symbolize the more delicate yet strong natural beauty of family and nature they landed on two intertwined peony, the “king of flowers.”

Kacie brings her own artistic background into the fold as a storyteller who developed as a photographer, and blogger who began developing recipes for publications in her early 20’s. Her aesthetic and approach to business and creative endeavors is to challenge the status quo and approach problems in new and unexpected ways. While Kyle is a linear and logical problem solver who grew up in the brewing industry and with that comes a deep experience as well as preconceptions based on what’s come before. “I bring a "dreamer" aspect to our brand and like to ask "why not?" a lot,” says Kacie.

The dichotomy of Kyle’s industry status and straightforward approach to brewing science and expression meets Kacie’s less rigid operational structure are evident in both the intertwined flowers of the logo and in the beers they plan to make. And those skills will become especially invaluable in the next role Kyle takes as they ease Kings & Daughters into existence.

Back Forty Beverage Company is a startup named to our most anticipated new breweries of 2021, however it’s not a brewing company that will make their own beers but instead help other breweries and cideries make theirs. Founded by Brice Barrett, Back Forty Beverage might be the first all contract brewing dedicated operation in Oregon not owned by one of the big conglomerates. Their smaller 20 bbl brewhouse, outsized cellar and on-site storage, shipping and packaging space will provide additional capacity to craft breweries that are stretched thin, and a home for others who don’t have their own location or equipment.

Kyle is the acting operational brewmaster for Back Forty as a consultant, and plans to stay in that role as long as he has the bandwidth between producing K&D beer and assisting outside brewers. K&D is the first official Back Forty partner invested in an Alternating Proprietorship license that will allow them to have a hands-on control of their beers at a facility they don’t have to own.

Those K&D beers will largely fall into a more sessionable rhythm of 5% abv (or even less!) beers that Kyle learned to love while enjoying pints in London, but they will not be British in-style but a more free flowing interpretation of modern tastes. These will be hoppy but low abv beers that can be called pales and hazy, but don’t quite fit into the stylistic boxes that we find so familiar.

“I honestly struggle with what to call the beer, I don't really know of anyone doing beers like these in the states,” says Larsen, who reports his first two mainstay beers will be “soft” more gentle Pale and IPA. “These two beers are certainly inspired creations, relying heavily on my memories of few beer "ah-ha" moments, like enjoying the only Susan from Hill Farmstead I've ever had, an absolutely phenomenal pint of Sonoma from Track Brewing and my first pour ever of Steady Rolling Man from Deya Brewing in the UK.”

In the states, breweries have been slowly rehabilitating the failed marketing of “Session IPA” by rebranding them as hazy pale, low-cal, health conscious or just calling them “hoppy.” The rise in popularity of lower abv seltzers, hard kombucha and sodas proves there is an audience for these beers but the struggle will be bridging the gap between perceived value and quality. After getting up and running past the hurdles of financing, permitting and the pandemic, introducing the public to a more delicate beer brand will be the next big challenge.

“I love hops, I love IPAs, West Coast, New England, Hazy, and I like drinking and enjoying a session with others,” says Kyle Larsen on the brewing portfolio he plans to cultivate. “While we were in England I found that it was absolutely amazing to drink many pints of 3.8% beers while chatting with friends and strangers. I want to make beer that is flavor intense, has an inviting soft body and encourages spending long afternoons in the company of others.”

The first beer from Kings & Daughters makes a bold statement as a collaboration with Kyle Larsen’s most recent former employer Trap Door Brewing. SUM TOTAL is a fruited Hazy Double IPA brewed with mango, passion fruit and pineapple, plus some of the hottest hops on the spot marketplace like Sabro, Strata, Mosaic and Idaho 7. Big, creamy, tropical, it’s like a blended fruit cocktail smoothie sipped in a hop field in the dead of summer. It also showcases how far Larsen has strayed from the classic old school northwest flavors of the early Double Mountain Brewing days and the more balanced and easy-drinking and less in your face beers of England.

“This is a collab beer of course and personally when I get the chance to do collaborations with other breweries I like to tear down all the walls that constrain us, no boundaries so to speak. I love pushing flavor intensity in beer and Trap Door is certainly known for their flavor intense hazy IPAs and DIPAs thus an idea was formed,” says Larsen, making clear that crushable sippers are his first priority but that nothing will be out of bounds in the future.

Kings & Daughters / Trap Door Brewing’s SUM TOTAL will be released in 16oz cans from Trap Door’s taproom in Vancouver, WA this Wednesday, March 9th but their first beers brewed out of Back 40 likely won’t debut until summer.

New School Beer and Trap Door will host a Virtual LIVE Q & A with Kyle Larsen this afternoon at 2pm 3/9 from our facebook page, tune in and drop in your juiciest comments and questions.